Campus News
Volunteers needed for forthcoming Graduation ceremonies
June 22nd, 2022
Registry and Academic Affairs are in the process of setting up graduation ceremonies in July and August and we’re asking for volunteers to help support events on the day.
Graduation is a celebration of the student journey and is an enjoyable event to be involved with.
For the Class of 2022 commencing from Saturday 23 July, we have 26 ceremonies. In addition to this, we have a further 29 ceremonies taking place for graduates from the classes of 2020 and 2021, finishing on Saturday 13 August 2022. To help deliver these celebrations we need over 1,300 hours of additional support, and that is where you can help.
If you feel you would like to be involved, please check with your line manager before completing the volunteer form.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve volunteered before or if this is the first time, we will provide support and briefing sessions to talk you through the day and the role you will play in it.
We would appreciate it if staff could confirm their availability by Friday 1 July in order to give us time to put the rota together and share it in good time before the event.
It’s no exaggeration to say that we wouldn’t be able to run the event without the support of colleagues across the university who give up their time. Thank you.
If you have any questions at all, please contact us graduation@nottingham.ac.uk.
Tags: graduation, staff volunteers, volunteer for graduation, volunteers
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Summer of Data
June 22nd, 2022
Throughout July the Research Support Team in University of Nottingham Libraries are organising activities to support you – a month of activities from Libraries to help you get the most from your research data.
If you have data from research projects that you aren’t getting the most out of or think your software could benefit researchers but don’t know how to share it, Libraries’ Summer of Data could help.
There are a number of ways to get involved, including:
- 1:1 session – talk through your data or software issues (organising data for sharing, submitting to repositories, anonymising data etc) with a member of the Research Support team
- Practical Data Management Plan (DMP) writing session – Learn about DMPs and then write yours during the session.
- Promote your data – We’ll share routes to let the university know about data in external repositories so we can help you promote your data more widely.
For further information visit Libraries’ Summer of Data page, or email library-researchsupport@nottingham.ac.uk
Tags: Library research, research, research support, Summer of Data
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Our diversity festival is attracting attention
June 21st, 2022
Our diversity festival is attracting lots of attention featuring in the summer issue of the Education Choices magazine. We’ve had more than 3,500 visits to our diversity festival web hub and hundreds of visitors to our events and activities.
There’s still time to get involved
Sphere Conference 2022: EDI change in action
Our 2022 Sphere Conference, chaired by Professor Raheela Khan, takes place on Thursday 23 June, 0930 to 1230 and aims to bring the university community together to share best practice and research in the field of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).
Bearing the unbearable supports staff touched by issues of fertility, pregnancy loss including through TFMR, child loss or unchosen childlessness, offering a session to share experiences, offer mutual support, and learn more about local, national and University resources and events that may be of help or interest.
The UoN Queer People of Colour Project presents Colours of Queerness. Through the use of multiple art mediums our exhibition aims to capture the culture and stories of queer people of colour living in Nottingham.
Equality, diversity and inclusion cards: an interactive tool for engaging with EDI in research. Introductory session to the novel and innovative equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) cards which help users engage with EDI considerations for their research projects.
Understanding the lived experience of EDI in R&AA and networking event. The Registry and Academic Affairs Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Working Group would like to invite colleagues from the department to join them for a networking and engagement event to help better understand the lived experiences of our staff.
Physics EDI Colloquium – Transforming EDI practices in STEM: recruitment, recognition and career reward. In this year’s School of Physics and Astronomy EDI Colloquium, Professor Louise Mullany will detail key findings from the recent STEMM Change EPSRC ‘Inclusion Matters’ project (2018-2021), where we have researched equality, diversity and inclusion from a communications perspective.
Talking Trees – Preview. This event presents a preview of a collaborative research project that provides staff, students and alumni from the University of Nottingham (UoN) with the opportunity to ‘Journey to the East’ without actually travelling to the country.
Crowns: an exhibition celebrating hair and head coverings. Inspired by the Halo Code, the School of Pharmacy and Faculty of Engineering have commissioned two student photographers, Bersun Kilinc and Saifullah Muhammad, to develop a public exhibition at Pavilion Café, Lakeside Arts, as part of the Diversity Festival in June 2022. The exhibition will be available remain at Lakeside throughout the summer. A digital version of the exhibition will also be made available.
How can you get involved?
Bring in food that reflects your cultural heritage, wear clothing, jewellery or makeup that speaks to your culture or arrange sessions to tell stories and exchange ideas about your culture and heritage. Post photos and stories onto your social media with the hashtag #WeAreUoN.
Want to find out more?
Find out more and book onto events via our diversity festival web hub.
Tags: Diversity Festival 2022, edi
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Restrictions to overflow parking on campus for open day: Friday 24 June 2022
June 21st, 2022
Approximately 800 overflow car parking spaces will be unavailable to use on University Park campus during the forthcoming open day on Friday 24 June 2022.
There will be no parking spaces available on either Florence Boot Field or Willoughby Field during this time, which would usually be used for visitors during open days.
This could cause a knock-on effect to capacity of other car parking facilities on campus, as well as potential traffic and congestion issues when entering or leaving the site.
Staff are requested to avoid bringing their car to campus on Friday 24 June 2022 wherever possible.
Members of staff who would normally use their car may want to consider alternative travel arrangements for getting to and from the university, including tram, bus or cycling.
Security staff will be on duty as usual and will be able to help out with advice and support for anyone with questions on the day.
Parking capacity is expected to return back to normal from W/C 27 June.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
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Keeping our community safe over the winter months
June 21st, 2022
Over the past winter, the university and local charity Emmanuel House worked in partnership to host a shelter on campus to help reduce the number of homeless people sleeping rough.
Between November 2021 and April 2022, more than 70 people who would otherwise have been rough sleeping were provided with protection and a place to stay on campus.
37 people were supported into other accommodation.
A number of staff and student helpers volunteered at the shelter over the months, assisting with meal services, cleaning and supporting residents.
While staying at the winter shelter guests received shelter, warmth, 24-hour support and three meals a day.
Ashley Roberts, Head of Campus Services, led the project. He said:
“It was fantastic to be able to make use of this empty property and to help out such a worthy charity. This shows how the University can have a real positive impact beyond the usual expectations of a Higher Education Institution and it has been great to see the positive engagement we have had from both our staff and student community following the announcement of this initiative“
The university was able to offer accommodation to Emmanuel House at a cost-neutral rate and worked with the charity to support residents to search for jobs, permanent accommodation and access to other services.
Denis Tully, CEO at Emmanuel House, said: “We are very grateful to the University of Nottingham for offering us a building in which to provide the emergency Winter Shelter.
It was also supported by staff and students who volunteered their time serving food, generally helping out and speaking with the guests. Given the very challenging circumstances around Covid it has been a very successful season, which just would not have been possible without the commitment of the university.”
Viv Dickinson, Shelter Manager, said: “The shelter ran better than anyone could ever have imagined. The whole project was successful due to the amazing work from the university and Emmanuel House’s staff and volunteers.”
Overall, 66 people volunteered at the winter shelter on campus throughout the winter.
Debbie Keown, staff member at UoN and supporter of Emmanuel House said: “I volunteered for the breakfast shift at the Winter Shelter. This involved working with another volunteer to provide breakfast to the residents. It was a busy shift before heading off to work at the university.
“I enjoyed getting to know the residents and being able to serve them as they started their often-challenging days. It was also great to learn more about the work of Emmanuel House and to support the hard-working staff.
“I would encourage anyone wanting to volunteer at the Winter Shelter to give it a go. There are many opportunities to get involved in and to make a contribution to support our city’s most vulnerable people.”
Find out more about the Winter Shelter on Emmanuel House’s webpages.
Tags: community, Emmanuel House, Shelter, Winter shelter
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New vision for PGR supervision
June 21st, 2022
Recently the PGR initiative ran a rapid improvement event with the aim of providing University of Nottingham supervisors with the necessary skills and frameworks to support them in the training of 21st Century doctoral candidates, and ensuring the best outcomes and experience for PGRs.
The work focused entirely on PGRs and supervisors based in the UK, but the outcomes will be shared and discussed with colleagues in Malaysia and China, and adapted as necessary to align with local cultural and regulatory conditions relating to PGR supervision.
This event took place over three consecutive days in May 2022, with contributions from around 30 members of staff who work closely with PGRs. The team included professional services PGR staff, academic supervisors, school PGR directors and Researcher Academy staff and Faculty Leads. Before this event, we surveyed PGRs, and received responses from 386 individuals, ~15% of the PGR population, on their supervisory experiences.
We also talked with more than 30 individual PGRs one-to-one to get more insight into their views on their supervisory experience during their degrees. In addition, we gathered information and data from many other sources including QAA, Quality Manual, Researcher Academy, a supervisory staff survey and workshop, PRES surveys as well as data showing PGR/Supervisor Ratios and how the different data sets correlated with each other. We aimed to examine where good and poor practice may be within PGR Supervision and then look to make improvements to policy and practice.
This event resulted in a new Cultural Vision for what PGR Supervision should look like, in which we stated that:
We will cultivate a positive research culture for PGR advising by:
Working together
Excellent PGR advising is based upon a shared effort, mutual respect and a sense of belonging that includes advisors and PGR, as part of a team.
Embedding reflective practise
PGR advisors routinely engage in open and honest reflective dialogue as a community of advisors. This open communication shares best practice as well as acknowledging the complexities and difficulties of PGR advising.
Engaging in continual professional development
Advisors routinely participate and value their own CPD, including a range of formal training. The university will support and acknowledge this activity.
Clearly communicating expectations
Advisory teams negotiate and agree on the shared expectations of all parties throughout the PGR journey. Agreements may address boundary setting, roles and responsibilities, communications and resourcing. All aspects of PGR advisory processes and roles are clearly defined and understood e.g. Quality Manual definitions.
Ensuring institutional support
The University of Nottingham will provide advisors with a variety of resources to support their role. These include time, Researcher Academy advocacy and training, expertise from APM and technical colleagues and effective central regulations.
In order to enable the new cultural vision, we identified practical actions to, such as:
- Changing culture, practice and terminology from Supervisor to Advisor
- A new “Expectations Agreement” form between Advisors and PGRs
- A revamped and mandatory Advisor professional development offering
- Introducing a supportive network of Advisors who can offer peer support and guidance
- Updating Quality Manual Regulations
These improvements will be implemented by the 2023/24 academic year, informed by wide engagement with communities on the planned changes over the academic year 2022/23.
The PGR Initiative is led by Prof Lucy Donaldson, sponsored by Deputy Vice-Chancellor Andy Long and supported and enabled by the fantastic Getting in Shape team.
Tags: PGR, PGR supervision
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Share your views on the Reasonable Adjustments Passport
June 21st, 2022
Last July we introduced a Reasonable Adjustments Passport to support staff and managers to discuss, agree and record reasonable adjustments.
More recently, we invited users of the passport to complete a very short survey to help us to evaluate the scheme after its first year.
We would like to thank those that have completed it already, and encourage other colleagues who may not yet have completed the survey to fill it out.
The deadline to complete the survey is Thursday 30 June 2022.
The Reasonable Adjustments Passport helps staff with disabilities or health conditions by:
- ensuring there is a clear record of the agreed adjustments
- reducing the need to reassess adjustments as a result of changes to a staff member’s job or line manager
- acting as a template for conversations about current and future adjustments.
To learn more about the Passport and/or our Toolkit for supporting disabled staff, please visit our Disability Support page for staff.
Tags: disability support, Reasonable adjustment passport, support for staff
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Revised date for changes to Teams meeting recordings
June 20th, 2022
Microsoft have provided a revised date for when changes will take place to where Teams meeting recordings are stored.
From Monday 4 July 2022, new meeting recordings will continue to appear in the Teams Chat but will not be stored in Microsoft Stream, they will instead be stored directly in your OneDrive or Teams Channel.
Following our previous message about the addition of expiry dates to meeting recordings, expiry dates will not be applied at this stage. This will give you time to become comfortable with this initial change.
We will share further details when Microsoft introduce expiry dates to recordings.
Where will my existing meeting recordings be stored?
Your old meeting recordings will remain in Microsoft Stream (now called ‘Classic Stream’). These recordings will not move from here.
Where will new recordings be stored and how can they be shared?
Any new meeting recordings you make from Monday 4 July 2022 will be stored directly within Microsoft 365:
- If you book a meeting in Outlook that uses Teams, or book a meeting in the Teams calendar outside of a Team’s Channel, the recording will be stored in your OneDrive (in a folder called ‘Recordings’)
- If you book a meeting using a Teams meeting in a Team’s Channel, or press the ‘Meet Now’ button in a Channel, the recording will be stored in the Channel’s file section under ‘Recordings’
This change will enable you to share recordings quickly and easily, including externally, using OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams.
How will meeting participants access new meeting recordings?
When someone records a meeting, that recording will continue to be made available within the Meeting Chat. What’s new is that by default people who attend and people who were invited will gain access to it. It is also possible to share recorded meetings with external attendees as well.
As the recorded meeting is a video file (an MP4 file), those videos will be visible in portal.office.com, OneDrive or the Teams Channel.
Do I need to move my recordings?
The following applies to all your meeting recordings:
- If you are teaching, we strongly advise you to upload the recording into Echo, as this is in line with the university’s policy on making Moodle the main source for teaching materials
- For colleagues not involved in teaching, you may wish to move a OneDrive based recording to another location, as your OneDrive is deleted shortly after you leave the organisation
Where can I find out more?
For more detailed information and advice and if you need to take further action, please visit the dedicated SharePoint site here.
Tags: Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft team recordings, Microsoft Teams, recordings, Team recordings
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The Nottingham Environment Conference 2022
June 16th, 2022
This year’s Nottingham Environment Conference will be taking place from Monday 20 – Tuesday 21 June 2022: with a number of events going on across the two days.
Have a look at what’s on offer to see how you can get involved:
Post-pandemic natures: 12 noon – 1pm, Monday 20 June
Speakers include:
Michael Walker, Nature Recovery Manager, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust
Monitoring projects, management plans, countryside stewardship grants and conservation grazing. Michael is the former chairman of Nottinghamshire Bat Group, County Mammal Recorder and member of the Nottinghamshire Dormouse Group.
Dr Paul Jepson, Head of Innovation, Ecosulis
Paul is Head of Innovation at Ecosulis, a company who specialises in nature recovery and rewilding and is driven by a clear purpose – to accelerate rewilding globally.
Lizzie Bruce, NW Norfolk Reserves Warden, RSPB
Lizzie is an experienced nature reserve warden for the RSPB and can currently be found on the Norfolk managing Titchwell Marsh and Snettisham Nature Reserves.
Sophie Pavelle, Author, Campaigns and Comms Co-ordinator at the Beaver Trust
Sophie is an author and science communicator. She is a communications co-ordinator for the Beavers Trust and presenter of Beavers Without Boarders. She is also the Ambassador for the Wildlife Trust and RSPB England Advisory Committee member. Her debut book is called Forget Me Not: finding the forgotten species of climate-change Britain.
Children in Nature: 10am – 11am, Tuesday 21 June
Speakers include:
Weronika ‘Ronni’ Ozpolat, Multicultural Motherhood
Weronika is a Speech and Language Therapist working both privately and within the NHS. She specialises in bilinguaism and runs the Multicultural Motherhood blog, writing about parenting, education, speech, language and bilingualism issues. She is a champion of raising children in natural environments and home schools her children.
Hannah Keys, Green Mentor, Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust
Green Mentors across England will support groups of young people (Green influencers) in creating youth-led environmental projects within schools, youth groups and local communities. LRWT is one of 37 organisations delivering this project.
Lisa Small, Director, Small People Nursery
Lisa founded Small People, an outdoor nursery based on a Forest School approach set within an acre of grounds. This magical place is nestled amongst the natural beauty of the Nottinghamshire countryside and children spend up to 80% of the day outside enjoying a unique experience and education.
Hamza Yassin, TV Presenter and Cameraman
Hamza is a passionate, exciting and highly knowledgeable on-screen wildlife cameraman and photographer. He is the presenter (under the guise of Ranger Hamza) of the hugely popular CBeebies’s live action show, Let’s go for a walk. Most recently Hamza presented and was the cameraman for Channel 4’s documentary, Scotland: my life in the wild.
Eating for the planet, 12 noon – 1pm, Tuesday 21 June
Speakers include:
Andy Swinscoe, Court Yard Dairy
Andy is part of Court Yard Dairy, cheesemakers committed to producing award winning produce and supporting the local community and businesses with 40p in every £1 staying within 40 miles of the farm.
Lucy Buckle, The Nottingham Forager
Passionate about wild, local and sustainable produce. Supporting local businesses and food networks within Nottingham and sharing experiences with Nottingham people.
Team member from UoN student magazine, Impact
The university’s multi-award winning student magazine.
Please email br-lce-rpa@exmail.nottingham.ac.uk to indicate which event you would like to attend and to get the link.
Follow the Life in Changing Environments Twitter feed: @LCE_RPA for more.
Tags: environment, Nottingham Environment Conference
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University’s largest ever funding award for UK’s most powerful MRI scanner
June 15th, 2022
A new £29 million national scanning facility will help the UK lead the world in ultra-high field imaging to transform understanding of the brain and treatment of disease .
The university has been awarded £29.1 million to establish the UK’s most powerful Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner as a national facility, subject to business case approval. This scanner will give researchers and doctors unprecedented insights into brain function and the mechanisms of human disease.
The funding award, from UK Research and Innovation, is thought to be the largest ever single award received by the university. It is part of a 3-year £481 million injection of funding into the UK’s research and innovation infrastructure, to support ground-breaking research to address global challenges.
The University of Nottingham will work with teams across the UK to establish the 11.7T Tesla MRI scanner as a national facility that will underpin the UK’s goal of retaining its position as a world leader in ultra-high field for brain imaging and spectroscopy. The new ultra-high field scanner will be sited in the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre at the university. Nobel Prize winner Sir Peter Mansfield developed MRI in Nottingham in the early 1970s, revolutionising healthcare across the world.
The capabilities of this new scanner will underpin a broad range of clinical and neuroscience-focused research programmes in the UK. It will be more than 1,000 times more powerful than the first scanners developed by the late Sir Peter and will help transform understanding of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s and neurodevelopmental disorders including autism and schizophrenia.
Ultra-high field (11.7T) MRI offers huge benefits in terms of improved sensitivity which will enable higher spatial resolution imaging, faster imaging, and greater sensitivity to physiological changes. The scanner will also provide a step change in the capabilities of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to provide information about the biochemistry of the human body.
The new insights into brain structure and function provided by the facility will be of immediate benefit to researchers in basic and clinical neuroscience. Previously inaccessible measures of metabolism and organ function in health and disease will be of value across the biomedical community, including the life science and healthcare industries and the NHS. Engineers, physicists and computer scientists will be engaged in the development of new ultra-high field technology.
This bid to establish an ultra-high field scanning facility for the UK was spearheaded by researchers at the University of Nottingham but involved more than 90 researchers from 20 different organisations across the UK whose expertise spans multiple disciplines, and who will help to develop and exploit the new facility.
Professor Bowtell, Head of the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, said: “We are extremely excited that the University of Nottingham, the birthplace of MRI, will host the new ultra-high field scanning facility. We are proud that this remarkable scanner will be housed in the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, on the campus where my mentor Sir Peter’s breakthrough transformed medicine.”
The new 11.7T scanner will operate in an extension to the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre on University Park Campus, providing space for visiting researchers, as well as facilities for patients and participants in research studies.
The 11.7T MRI scanner is expected to come into service in 2025
It will:
- allow functional MRI measurements to be used to probe the organisation of the brain at an unprecedented level of spatial detail
- help identify changes in brain architecture and microstructure in neurodegenerative diseases and in a range of neurodevelopmental disorders, opening a new window on the gene-brain interactions that underpin brain health
- allow measurements of brain metabolism and bioenergetics at volumes that are 10 times smaller than is possible at 3T, opening new ways to study changes in neurochemistry in mental health disorders
- support the development of new MRI technology and image processing methods, which can also be applied to lower-field scanning
Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange, said:
“This is thrilling news. The University is renewing its research strategy in 2022 for the next five years and a key aim is to align our exceptional research to strategic and global challenges. Receiving this landmark award from UKRI underlines our commitment to address the big challenges faced by society and this will allow our researchers to further establish the UK as a world leader in ultra-high magnetic field MRI. It is a tremendous accolade and is testament to many years of dedication by Professor Bowtell, Professor Penny Gowland and Professor Dorothee Auer and their colleagues at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre.”
UKRI’s Infrastructure Fund portfolio funding will power ground-breaking research across a spectrum of disciplines that will help to tackle a range of societal issues, from the impacts of climate change to adolescent mental health. The projects, located across the UK, will strengthen international capability, and transform expertise across the arts, physics, life and environmental science, social science, medicine and many more research areas.
The university has also benefitted from £3.8m in funding from the UKRI’s Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), which supports critical early-stage translation of UK research to real impacts, transforming public services, creating new jobs, attracting private investment and forging new partnerships with business and charities.
Funding will allow research teams at Nottingham to unlock the value of their work, including early-stage commercialisation of new technologies and advancing changes to public policy and services such as NHS clinical practice.
UKRI Chief Executive Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser said:
“The UK is home to world-renowned facilities in a wide range of fields, which act as global hubs for research and innovation. We must ensure that we renew and upgrade that capability to keep pace with technological advances, empowering our researchers and innovators to go further faster.
“Today, we are investing £481 million across the UK that will ensure our talented people, teams and innovative businesses have access to the world-class infrastructure they need to unlock their full potential.”
Tags: Brain imaging, MRI, Sir Peter Mansfield, Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre
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